Archive for January, 2012

I am, perhaps, the only male in North America who does not follow American football; but I do follow a bit of professional baseball. This may have to do with my Sigma personality and an upbringing that involved sandlot baseball and closely following the Detroit Tigers, and running crosscountry (a solitary, lone wolf kind of sport) in my formative years.

Thus; my metaphor…. My virtual acquintance, writing under the psuedonym ‘Amir Larijani’, has written a few pieces that knock the ball out of the park. You will find them here, here, here, and also here.

Seen recently on ChristianCafe: A woman who states that she wants “her man to be an extension of her.”

Seen just now, in response to a Cafe question prompt about how their last relationship ended: “Well, that’s a BIG question isn’t it?? ha! Do you want me to tell you it was on Biblical grounds? If you are THAT type of person to ask this, then we probably won’t be a good match anyway! 😉

I was in recent months at a small group hosted by the fellowship I affiliate with, and met a man who asked me if I was married. I said, “no, divorced. And biblically free.” What does that mean, “biblically free?” He asked me.

These are, of course, outliers. But outliers are useful for marking the frontier, aren’t they?

Tolkien has been roundly criticized on more than one occasion for presenting a world that is “Manichaean”: that is to say, in Middle-Earth pure good fights on one side, pure evil on the other, and we know which is which, and we know who we are supposed to root for. And we know this is unrealistic. Tolkien himself was aware of such criticisms, and in his personal letters, he admits that “of course, in real life, there are orcs on both sides.” Indeed there are. Are we emboldened to fight for our culture when we realize that half of “our culture” is on the Adversary’s side to begin with?…”